April 8, 2005
I Hate Mergers
So I have been itching for a new cell phone. I have it all picked out. Cingular has it now exclusively. Yeah! AT&T was acquired by Cingular so I should be good.
Call Cingular. Lady proceeds to tell me that I am a “blue” account and only “orange” accounts are eligible for that phone. Huh? Blue seems to refer to the AT&T logo color scheme. Genius. So what can I do I ask? Will Blue ever get that phone? Not likely, she says. Blue isn’t getting anything new ever again.
Then she proceeds to tell me that I can pay a $15 per number charge to transfer my services to an orange account. And the phone? Oh, you have to pay retail price plus more for that. Can’t I get it for the same as the online price on the web site? No. Sorry, that is for new customers only. Wait. If I pay you the $15 per line, doesn’t that sort of make me a new customer? No, not really. Geez.
How these guys get away with this baffles me. I can’t wait till we all have Wi-Fi phones and we can switch carries at a whim — if carriers even exist.
Verizon did this to me years ago when I moved. They told me I had an “Indiana” account and I couldn’t use that in “California”. I had to sign-up again with them and just let my old plan run out. I wrote my checks each month to Verizon, just Verizon, not Verizon Indiana. I didn’t see why the customer had to suffer for their crappy systems issue.
Who is left? T-Mobile maybe. They will find a way to drive me nuts too!
